Dragon Empress

Chapter 12

“Valerion was doomed ages ago,” said Nordrion. “And while the death of any dragon is undesirable, Thorion’s was an inevitability. He was a centureling, barely out of his egg. He could not have stood against Necrovar’s power, which is why he made the decision to exorcise and preserve half his soul.”

That decision had been Keriya’s idea, and in the end, it had not stopped the Shadow from returning. Looking back on it now, Thorion’s sacrifice seemed a monumental waste.

Keriya straightened. She’d made her own decision hours ago—years ago, really—but she needed to say it, affirm it for herself: “I will not let anyone else die because of my weakness.”

Squaring her shoulders, she looked at the Eminarchs. “How can you control valemagic so well? How do you resist its call so it doesn’t consume you?”

“You ascribe too much power to valemagic,” said Nordrion. “It has no voice. It does not call. Like all magic, it is merely energy: the energy to create and destroy. It desires both and neither. It cannot choose between the two.”

For all the dragons’ supposed knowledge, Keriya thought they were woefully ignorant about this subject.

“If you wish to understand, you will—”

“Seek out the Dragon Empress, I know. What I don’t know is how to find her.”

“She dwells in the Broken Vale,” said Clauye.

“Only those who already know the way may find her home,” Keriya quoted back, irritation crackling in her tone. “Isn’t there something else you can tell me, something actually useful?”

“There are magics that bind us,” said Nordrion. “We cannot divulge the secrets of the Dragon Empress, for she is our god and ruler.”

A subtle thrill stole through Keriya. She had the sense she’d heard those words before—but not in any of the texts and tomes she’d combed through.

“Well, I need something to go on. I’m running out of time.”

“You are,” Nordrion agreed. “Entropy grows. It makes magic volatile and un-wieldable. Soon our system will collapse under the weight of its own imbalance. You are the only one who can stop that from happening.”

Keriya shuddered. Nordrion had said what she’d known all along. In saying it, he’d illuminated everything that was wrong with her life.

“I’ll do it,” she vowed.

Whatever it takes.

The dragons had no need for good-byes, so Keriya left without another word. She teleported, arriving with a soundless flash outside Viran’s door. He would be asleep at this late hour, but she could lie beside him, let the rhythm of his beating heart calm her.

She slipped into the darkened room. No fire flickered in the hearth, but Viran was awake. He leaned against the wall, shirtless, arms folded, staring through the glass panes of the balcony doors. The pale shine of fallen snow outlined his features in sorrowful silver.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he murmured, not looking at her.

Keriya sighed as she shut the door. “We need to talk.”

“You first.”

So she told him everything—what she’d discovered at the gala, what Seba and Belbreeze had said, what she realized she’d have to do.

“They want me to marry someone for the sake of an alliance. Have children. Make sure the Equilumos bloodline continues, in case I fail when they force me to wield valemagic like a trained circus animal.”

Viran nodded, an infuriating picture of serenity as he gazed through the glass.

Keriya frowned. “That’s it? You don’t have any opinions, maybe some advice?”

“What advice can I offer you, Keriya? What can I say that wouldn’t be criminally selfish?”

She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You came this far for Allentria; who would I be if I kept you from forging an alliance with someone who has the power to save it?”

“I’m the only one who has the power to save Allentria.” The words burst from her lips. “I don’t need the Imperial Government to drag more countries into my war.”

“You do need other countries,” said Viran, still refusing to look at her, “because when Necrovar returns, so will his followers. How do you plan to handle the shadowtroops when they show up to fight for their master?”

“The same way I handled it during the Final Battle,” she snapped. “I have the power, don’t I? Why shouldn’t I use it?”

She was exhausted, she was a bit tipsy, and she was fed up with dead ends. Her dead-end research, her dead-end conversations with the dragons, and the dead end she’d run into earlier. She’d crashed headlong into a barrier she’d never foreseen, tangled herself in an invisible spiderweb of power and politics.

“Power corrupts.” Viran’s words were an eerie echo of what Seba had said. “You know why you can’t use yours.”

“I did it once and the world survived—stands to reason I can do it again. I’ll siphon energy from every enemy who dares step foot on our shores, and I’ll unravel them.”

Her chest heaved with searing breaths. The last nineteen months had been nothing but a lead-up to an inevitable battle: an agonized, drawn-out calm before a storm.

“Anyone who seeks to weaken Allentria will only give me more strength,” she barreled on. “I hope they come. I invite them to come.”

Viran finally looked at her. “That’s not a feasible option.”

“Why not? I’m stronger now, and smarter. Maybe I could do it. Maybe it would be easy.”

Something odd shimmered in his gaze. “The Keriya I know isn’t power-hungry.”

Those words settled in her soul like a leaden anchor. As she reflected on her history, an ugly pattern emerged. In Aeria she’d yearned for magic. In Jidaeln she’d fought for strength. Now she wanted to harness the ultimate destructive force of the universe.

“Then I’m not sure you know the real Keriya,” she whispered.

The way he watched her made misery coil around her innards. It was like he’d never seen her before—or like he was finally seeing her for what she truly was.

“You’ve changed.” His voice was soft, almost pitying.

“War changes people.”

“We’ve had peace for months—”

“Not me,” she said, heat prickling the corners of her eyes. “Every day I fight a battle not to use valemagic again. Every day I hear its voice calling, and every day it becomes harder to resist.”

Viran’s mask slipped, and he took a step toward her. She instinctively raised her arms, yearning for his embrace, but he stopped. The swell of longing in her chest crashed against jagged rocks and drained away, leaving her empty.

“The moment has come when we must face a painful truth,” Viran said at last, his voice as cold and distant as the snow-capped mountains. “You and I were never destined to be together.”

Abrupt, unexpected, incongruous, his statement slammed into her. She forgot about valemagic, the war, and Necrovar. She even forgot her anger. She reached out to Viran telepathically and found nothing—he’d cloaked his mind, shielding himself from her.

“Destiny has nothing to do with it,” she said.

“It was nice while it lasted, but your path was laid out for you by Shivnath,” he informed her in the aloof, lecturing tone he’d often used as Ansai of the Xamarai. “I’m not part of that journey.”

Her mouth hung open. Her eyes roved every inch of his skin, seeking a sign that he didn’t mean this, that he wasn’t telling her goodbye.

Yet she could see the goodbye in his eyes. He was abandoning her.

Keriya fought an ache, at once alien and horribly familiar, in her heart. How could it have come to this? Every night they laughed and talked. Every morning he kissed her before leaving for his day.

But maybe, as with the gala and its guests’ motives, she had been determined not to see this truth. Maybe he’d grown tired of her messes. Maybe he’d been planning to leave her for ages. Maybe he’d only needed the thinnest excuse.

Keriya didn’t trust herself to speak. If she opened her mouth a scream might come out, or a sob. She would not cry, not over something like this.

This was, perhaps, another inevitability.

She was a flawed creature, and no matter how hard she tried, she kept failing. She’d tried to protect her loved ones, she’d tried to be a good person, she’d tried to find the answers she so desperately needed, but nothing had worked.

Forcing her back straight, she approached Viran and plucked Aurelas from the table where she’d left it. She straightened a messy stack of books and glanced at the bed, where Sethildras rested.

Viran strode past her and hefted it up.

“Keep it,” she said in an empty voice. “For protection.”

Then she turned and walked to the exit, clutching Aurelas to her chest. She put her hand on the knob. Turned it. Creaked open the door. The lurid brightness of the hall flooded into the dark room, the room where she’d once been happy.

When Viran made no move to stop her, Keriya slipped out, closing the door on that chapter of her life. As she did, something inside her broke.

It doesn’t matter, she thought. I’m used to being alone.

CHAPTER SEVEN“A dream is the only place where you cannot hide from yourself.”

~ Shivnath Valestar, Twelfth Age

Keriya knelt on a blood-soaked battlefield. Necrovar leered above her. Between them lay a pile of black sludge and scattered white scales: the remnants of Valerion Equilumos.

The nightmares had returned.

She wasn’t strong enough to face Necrovar. She knew that—so why had she yelled at Viran, threatening to wield valemagic? Stumbling to her feet, she fled across the barren Fironian plains.

Though she’d run east, the landscape shifted west. It morphed and twisted, becoming a place whose memory had been burned into the deepest threads of her soul.

“No,” she moaned. “Not again.”

She stood at the edge of the Chasm. Thorion wheeled overhead, locked in aerial combat with a shadowbeast. Bronze scales gleamed. Purple eyes flashed.

“Thorion,” she shrieked, “I’ll save you this time, I have the power!”

But when she delved within herself to wield, she found no magic. She was empty. A plume of black fire engulfed Thorion and he fell to the jagged slope, crashing against the rocks.

He twitched twice; then he was still.

“NO!” Keriya ran—not toward Thorion, but away, over the broken black hills. Too many times had her mind replayed this memory. Too many times had her heart shattered at the awful sight.

She tripped and fell, tumbling down a steep ridge. She landed at last, bruised and n***d, at the base of a cliff. Above, silhouetted against a sky the color of day-old blood, was Shivnath.

“You failed,” said the dragon god.

“I know!” Keriya pushed herself up on shaking limbs and screamed at the guardian of the Smarlands. “Don’t you think I know that? I’ve been trying to fix it—all this time, I’ve been trying to make up for my mistakes.”

No, this wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be trapped in this nightmare. She’d forgiven herself for old crimes, vowed to be a better person . . . why, then, did burning hatred coat her lungs, making her wish she could rip off her skin?

She staggered backward, away from Shivnath, and fell off the cliff.

Not even falling was enough to jolt her awake. She plummeted down, down, down into darkness, until she passed through one world into another. Galaxies swirled and coalesced into mountains. Stars were reflected in a black ocean. An island came into view, upon which stood twelve stone obelisks.

Remember this, whispered a voice in her head.

“Thorion?” she whispered back. That was definitely Thorion. Of course she remembered—she could never forget. Everything he’d ever said to her was kept safe, locked away in a secret cavern of her heart.

Remember this.

“I do remember,” she said, hurtling toward the island. “But I don’t understand.”